Bill's Favor
by lankypanky
Summary: We heard a lot about how Bill owed Joel (and Tess) some favors, and got some hints that he was too frightened to turn Joel down when he cashed it in. What might that favor have been? (Rating is for explicit violence, including some sexual violence. Also three characters who swear like they're expecting a medal for the frequency of profanity.)
1. Chapter 1

Tess was gritting her teeth so hard that Bill could count the tendons in her neck. She'd already read his nervous hesitation as he stashed in his pack the items he needed from the city that were their end of this month's deal. He flinched when she finally said: "So. The masks?"

Bill hesitated, knowing he didn't have an answer they'd like. Joel filled the silence: "He's travelin' a little light, Tess."

"Sure is." Tess was already raising her pistol. She didn't even bother to raise it all the way to Bill's head, she just had it pointed sideways at his balls, almost lazily. "Want to hand our goods back, Bill?"

"Wait, dammit!" Bill was already backing up, hands in the air. Looked like Tess and Joel had had a rough trip, this time. Tess' entire upper lip was coated in blood, and she had bruises blooming on her cheekbones; looked like she'd possibly broken her nose at some point between the quarantine zone and the old clock tower they were meeting at. Joel's shirt sported its own heavy bloodstains, but then . . . it usually did. Still, Bill knew enough to not test them when the pair clearly still had their adrenaline up from killing infected. Joel and Tess tended to work in a sort of murderous lockstep; cross them, and they'd already be stepping over your corpse. Reloading. "I got the masks. And I got the meds you were talkin' about needing . . . and I also don't got either of 'em."

Oh, _shit_. Wrong move. Now Joel had a revolver at pointed at him, too. Bill was still reevaluating that when Tess grabbed the front of his shirt and got him into kissing distance with her pistol. "Explain _fast_, Bill."

He licked his lips and raised his hands higher. "Take the gun out of my face, Tess. You ain't gonna shoot me. I'm your meal ticket, remember?"

"Tess . . . " Joel's tone sounded like an agreement with Bill, though he didn't say anything more than her name.

"Yeah." Tess' eyes were narrowed, but she let go of him. "Yeah, all right." She stared at Bill, toying with the safety of her pistol, then reholstered it. Joel still had that revolver out, but he looked ready to listen, and the barrel was beginning to lazily drift its way away from having a bullet drill its way right through Bill's face. Tess raised her bloody upper lip in a snarl that made her look almost animalistic: "Start talking."

"I fucked up," Bill immediately confessed. "Got some intruders on the outskirts of my patch, set off some tripwires. When I tracked 'em down, they said they were traders, waved a white flag an' all, and I met with 'em to see what they had. They showed me their gas masks – so old they were rottin', you know, not safe any more. Wanted new ones. Then they showed me their meds. They got a _stockpile_, Tess. I didn't just see the bottles, I saw the pills. Amoxicillin, morphine, really good shit. They are straight-up loaded. I said I'd trade them masks for meds. Figured you'd want the drugs more, anyway."

"Yeah," Tess admitted. She was rocking on the balls of her feet, now, still squinting at him. "And?"

Bill finally lowered his arms so his hands could grab his elbows. This part was hard. "They rooked me," he admitted. "I let my guard down. They got the masks and the pills both, now."

"Christ, Bill," Joel spat at him. "How long you been doin' this?"

"I _know_. Don't you think I fuckin' know?" Bill could tell his cheeks were burning; he really did feel shame over the incident. He'd agreed to let the two untrustworthy traders stay in one of his outbuildings near the border of his claimed territory, believing that they'd never find all the traps between them and him. But he'd left the masks, bulky to carry, too near their resting spot. And those assholes had made it through the tripwires, found them, and left.

"So you have nothing." Tess was jutting her chin out at him. "That's what I hear you saying, Bill. You got zip and squat."

"No." Bill had his hands out again. "No, I know right where these fuckers are. They got themselves trapped on a rooftop. Three sides of sheer drop, one side of infected trying to climb the wall to the bottom of the fire escape. The traders been building cooking fires up there for four days now. Waitin' for me to stop payin' attention. I shoot an arrow at their heads every time I see one. I got . . . well, I got a watch on them now doin' the same thing." No need to bring up Frank specifically. "They're spooked."

"Sounds like you want help," Joel drawled, finally tucking his revolver back into a holster.

"The take is almost all yours," Bill promised. "Masks and meds. All of it. I just want some clothes they were carrying, and I want 'em out of my hair." Frank was just about out of pants, and the invaders had been carrying some jeans in roughly his size. The crazy bastard had made Bill promise he'd try to get the pants, pointing a shotgun at Bill's head, before Frank had let him leave to meet the smugglers.

"What's your plan?" Joel was rumbling at him, doing that absentminded ammo check that was almost a nervous tic with him. "You askin' us to shoot our way through a wall of infected?"

Bill knew he had them, now. "Nah, nah." He waved his hands dismissively. "They're trapped where they are, but we're not stuck out. We can take the rooftops. They can't. They got nothing over there will let them do that."

"How many?" Tess wanted to know.

"Two. Partners." Bill's jaw was already clenching at the idea of how badly he wanted to hurt them, how much he wanted to punish them for making him feel a fool. For making him look a fool at the end of Frank's shotgun. "They got guns, but if they had anything in the way of ammo, they got to be just about out. They're not even shooting the infected around them or trying to take me out when I check on 'em. You know? They're conservin' everything. Maybe even water."

Tess rocked her hips slowly from side to side, staring at the ground. The metronome of her body was a visible indication of the process inside her head. Bill watched her for half a minute before he looked up at Joel. He nearly laughed before he remembered what a sick joke the world was, now. She was half their size, but both men had their hands in their back pockets, thumbs hanging out, while they waited to see what this crazy-mean woman decided what they were about to do.


	2. Chapter 2

"Tess." Joel had crept forward and laid the fingers of his right hand across her upper arm. Bill watched as she immediately reached up and gripped them, hard. "Tess, we can do it. Just two of 'em. And Bill's gonna give us everything." He raised his eyes for a second to catch Bill's. "Pretty near everything. Drugs and masks." Bill nodded.

"Yeah." Tess was clenching those fingers in her own. "We're going to do this." She released Joel's hand abruptly and shot her face towards Bill. "How far?"

Bill was so relieved that the smugglers hadn't already attacked him that it took him a minute to regroup his thoughts. The only predictable thing about this couple was their merciless violence, and, even given how unlucky he'd been recently, he was thanking his stars that he'd managed to redirect their homicidal urges from himself to the "traders" who'd ripped him off. "Couple of miles that way." He jerked his head in the appropriate direction. "Back in the day, there was a shipping warehouse out that way, and the folks who worked there used to live mostly in a little suburb. It's pretty bad, now. But that's where the assholes are holed up, right in the middle of what you'd call downtown. Office building right next to the old warehouse. Found 'em by following the sound of all the infected attention they were attracting. They weren't expecting to be found, so they got themselves entirely cornered."

Tess nodded thoughtfully and dug some rags out of her pack. "Show us the way," she declared, beginning to wrap her hands in the rough fabric. Joel, behind her, was smoothly checking over his own guns, his feet already poised to follow.

"Yeah," Bill agreed. He hoped, not for the first time, that the smugglers wouldn't jump him and tear out the gold fillings he'd received back before the world went to shit. They seemed normal, reasonable people at the moment, but that could change at the drop of a hat. "Little bit of a hike. Just follow me."

The path, an old suburban thoroughfare, was reasonably quiet. Bill could even remember the time when it had been busy twice a day, groups of people going back and forth to the warehouse. It was oddly deserted now, considering how many of those workers were still wandering the outskirts, infected and clawing at his barbed-wire walls. He was betting that its emptiness meant that most of the usual runners had been drawn towards the commotion caused by the traders passing through, which meant those infected weren't gone, just ahead of them somewhere. Still, he was glad for the temporary rest from attacks, and almost enjoying the company. Their conversation was limited, but civil, and it was a novelty to hear a voice that wasn't Frank's or his own.

"We're cutting left," Bill said, softly, as they neared the outskirts of the first abandoned set of townhouses. "We're going up, but we've got to get to a roof where we can make our way over. C'mon."

He heard the duo behind him check their magazines in unison. "Better know what you're doing, Bill," Tess hissed at his back.

He didn't bother to respond, just tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth, a little thing that helped him remember patience and his routines, while he led them left, left, right, left, through the short maze of the only sizeable buildings this place had to offer. Its "downtown" was, of course, also the only place full of infected, but that was how most urban spaces had ended up after the infection spread. The moaning of runners was audible somewhere in the near distance, but its location was difficult to pinpoint.

Bill paused as they padded their way up the second-to-last alleyway before the path that would take them up to the roofs and Frank's sniper position. "We should be quiet," Bill murmured, motioning his followers forward. He'd sunk into a crouch to make himself less noticeable, and the smugglers had followed suit. "Lot of runners around. You hear 'em? They're usually over by the east fence, but, oh shit."

They'd rounded a corner into a blind alley, the end of which held a knot of stumbling infected. Bill immediately started backing up, trying to get himself safely hidden again, and nearly tumbled as he felt Tess' palm on his back. She was already vaulting over him, using him as an obstacle, and he was still reacting when she drove a blade right through the eye socket of the first runner who turned towards her noise.

The rest of the runners turned and screamed, almost in unison, and dove for her; her mad, nimble dash through their grasping hands brought her right up to the dead end brick wall at the end of the alley. She didn't seem alarmed, however, and was employing now both her pistol and that long blade with deadly purpose. Joel was already flashing by while Bill automatically wiped the blade of his kukri on his pants in two swift swipes, bracing himself for impact.

"Ya _fuckin' maniac_!" Bill screamed at Tess, while reluctantly forcing himself forwards to deal with the crowd. Joel was already harvesting his way towards her, alternating between a lazily hoisted shotgun and a baseball bat with some kind of knife fastened to the end. He didn't even pause to see if his strikes were successful, and some of the walking wounded he hadn't taken all the way down were sprinting straight towards Bill.

"Christ," Bill blurted, and sank his own blade into the first one's face. He was running on body memory now, a body memory that told him not to waste ammo as long as he could keep swinging the kukri. The second runner, missing a shotgun-sized chunk of its body that Joel had blown away, was already dying, and Bill managed to shove a foot against its staggering thigh so he could pull his weapon out of the first runner just in time to bury it in his new threat's forehead. He was beginning to kick into high gear, he could tell. Beginning to reach that stage that Frank called, "Kill Bill."

*thunk* He got the kukri in and out of the next runner's head.

*thunk* He'd decapitated the one that Joel had shot in the belly and was still clawing at his feet.

*thunk* He'd brained the one Tess was leveling her pistol at before she could even pull the trigger.

*thunk* Bill dimly registered that he'd raced his way past Joel, and was now level with Tess. The last infected still moving had tripped over the corpses of its fellows, but he had that solid, heavy blade in its brain just the same.

"Well," Bill heard the slow Texas drawl behind him, "All right." Bill turned, panting, spitting, afraid he might have swallowed infected blood.

"Joel, I broke my _fucking_ bayonet," Tess declared, and it was only then that Bill realized what she'd been fighting with: the bayonet from a rifle, only without the rifle. She'd been punching her way into skulls with it, and she'd lost the tip in one of the runner's brains. She had those rags wrapped around her hands for support, but her palms were still sporting some bloody cuts from managing the heavy blade.

"Got a shiv," Joel grunted at her. "Not gonna last long." He pulled a mess of knives and tape out of his backpack in one smooth movement, holding it out handle-first for Tess, checking over his shoulder as he did so.

Bill could already tell that Tess was ten types of high over the fight she'd just initiated, but he was so pissed off he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "You happy now?" he asked.

"Good fuckin' job, Bill, leading us into a massacre." Tess had slid the shiv into her waistband, was briskly reloading, and Bill tried, without success, to remind himself how dangerous it was to mouth off to her.

"I didn't do _shit_." Bill was so ramped up himself that he wanted to kill something else, but had no viable targets left. Instead, he began verbally blasting his way at Tess. "All I know is we've got to get to that fire escape, that one right there." He gestured with the kukri, and wanted to vomit at the smell it was giving off, that sick sweet smell of infected brains. "_You're_ the dumb bitch who decided we had to cut our way there."

As soon as the words left his mouth, Bill knew Tess was ready to take him down. He had his blade out, she was empty-handed, and they stared at each other for a few seconds, bodies coiling in anticipation, before Bill was being yanked back onto his heels, Joel's heavy hand grabbing the back collar of his shirt, the barrel of a revolver pressed against his skull. He'd known exactly how Tess was at the moment, but hadn't realized that Joel was ready to kill him just because he'd called his partner a bitch.

"'Pologize," Joel said, and Bill could feel the hot spit on his neck that was spraying from the other man's mouth. The tension broken, Tess paced in a small, quick circle, like a nervous animal.

Bill, however, was not about to do so, only partially because he wasn't thinking particularly rationally. If he gave these crazy fuckers an inch, they'd demand a mile. "Fuck you," he replied.

"Joel!" Tess was rolling her eyes, splaying her fingers. "I'm over it. We've got to go up. Up _that_ way." She jerked her face at the rusting fire escape. "Let's just get this done."

Joel mechanically released his hold on Bill and shoved him lightly away, his gaze already fixed upwards. Bill spent about half a minute stumbling, coughing, before he realized that the smugglers really didn't give a shit about him any more, they just wanted up onto the roof.

"I got a ladder hidden," Bill told them, and both of their heads jerked towards him, alert. "One minute."

They had a lucky path cut out for them, as long as they kept their heads down. It was ninety percent of the reason Bill had been able to keep watch on the traders, been able to stash Frank up there.


	3. Chapter 3

The ladder was a rusty piece of shit, but they only had to use it to make it up to the second floor of the fire escape, and Bill was pretty sure it would hold up for that long. Bill rattled it a few times, testing, and scrambled up first. He was surprised to feel himself panting a little, not from exertion, but from nervousness at the problem of just how he was going to introduce Frank to the the smugglers. Frank knew all about them – Bill had to tell _someone_ when Tess and Joel did something so crazy they were scaring the shit out of him – but Bill had only barely hinted to them that he had someone else around, much less the fact that it was a man he was fucking on a regular basis. He heard the soft impacts of the smugglers' careful footsteps behind him as he worked his way up to the warehouse roof. Tess' were nimble, Joel's more heavy and measured, but they were both effectively quick and quiet - far more so than he was, Bill had to admit.

Bill reached the edge of the roof and stuck a hand up past it to catch Frank's attention. "Hey," he said. "Back." There was no response. God damn it, that skinny fucker must have fallen asleep up there. Bill slowly lifted his head up above the edge, peering, hoping Frank wouldn't suddenly wake and blow him away. He needn't have worried; the roof was empty. Full of much more debris than Bill remembered there being when he'd left, but empty of human presence. He didn't take the time to wonder about the mess.

"God _damn_ it," he said instead, and heaved himself all the way up and over the edge of the short parapet running around the borders of the rooftop. A glass bottle smashed itself open in front of him, hurled from behind the matching parapet on the office roof where the traders were holed up, and Bill quickly scurried, crouching, to the spot that he and Frank had been taking turns watching from. The stunted wall on the side facing the office building gave halfway-decent cover. He glared at the twisted nest of sleeping bag that Frank _should_ have been sitting on, but which was vacant. There was tented piece of paper perched where his ass should have been, though, and Bill snatched it up, finding a sparse message in Frank's neat print: _These assholes aren't going anywhere. I'm back at the bar._

"Gonna _kill_ you," Bill told the note. "Gonna get _yourself_ killed if you can't follow a fucking plan."

Tess had sprinted towards him on all fours, had herself tucked down behind the parapet as well. "This is you keeping a watch on them?" she demanded.

"Well, they're obviously still here," Bill snapped back at her, crumpling the note in his hand. Joel was creeping his own slow way towards them, eyes fixed on the office rooftop beyond. Neither of the traders were immediately visible, and had most likely taken up positions almost identical to their own behind their matching wall. "Okay," Bill continued as Joel heaved his body into position next to Tess. "Bad news is, they obviously know we're here. Good news is, the first thing they did was throw a bottle at me, and didn't even try to hit either of you. Probably means they've got nothing better to hit us _with_. We just got to get a handle on where they are."

"You got the scope?" Tess whispered. Joel nodded, swung his bag off his shoulders, and dug through it efficiently to remove a small rifle sight. He shrugged the bag back on while he held on to the sight and used it like a tiny telescope.

After a minute, Joel muttered, "There's only one." He was already handing the scope over to Tess, almost before she'd put her hand out for it, and Bill shook his head at their uncanny synchronization. "See her?"

"Yeah," Tess agreed. "Just the one. Where's the other one, Bill?" she demanded, about two split seconds after Bill had already renewed his decision to murder Frank the next time he saw him. "You said two."

"Don't know," Bill had to admit. "I met two, and there were two over there on the roof for a couple of days."

Joel opened his palm to receive back the scope that Tess was already smoothly putting into it. "What are we looking for, Bill? Man? Woman?"

"It was two chicks. White."

"Mm." Joel was slowly scanning. "Roof door looks jimmied. One's probably inside."

"I'm the one who got that door open," Bill told him. "While ago, when I first scavenged it. But yeah, that's where she'd have to be, somewhere in the offices down there."

"Great," snarled Tess. "It's gonna be just great, doing a room-by-room for six fucking floors while we try not to get bitten or shot."

Joel sighed in agreement, put the scope away, and looked over at her. "You still want to do this? We could just leave 'em with Bill and come back in a few weeks after they starve."

"Shouldn't be runners inside," Bill contributed. "They're all out in the goddamned street. It's gonna suck to get over there, though. We'll have to use that." He nodded at the long length of weather-faded wood that the traders had used to cross over, and which he and Frank had jointly jerked back to the warehouse roof, effectively trapping the other pair.

"I'm not going back empty-handed," Tess decided, and Joel nodded at her.

"Okay. Got it. Tess, I'm blowin' cover. You keep her off me."

"Wait," Bill blustered. "What're we –"

Joel sprang into motion towards the heavy board, and Bill was freshly startled at just how fast the man could move for his size. Tess was aiming her gun over the top of the parapet, and took a potshot at the dark head that was peering from the other side. She'd clearly missed, but the head ducked down out of sight. Joel swung the wood across the gap. The woman on the other roof made a move towards the end that had landed close to her, and Tess fired off another shot as Joel dropped back into cover.

"Bill!" Joel roared at him. "I'm goin' over. Tess is gonna keep watch on the far end; you hold this end here in place."

Bill wasn't quite prepared for how quickly this was all happening, and stammered: "I-" Joel wasn't even waiting for a response, he was pulling himself briskly onto the board, on all fours, and Bill had to hurriedly lurch forwards himself to slam the weight of his upper body onto the edge of the plank that Joel was swiftly moving across. The trader's hands appeared once again, seizing the board, trying to turn it over to dump the smuggler off, and Tess fired off another shot. Bill watched anxiously as Joel threw his body into a fully upright position and _sprinted_ the last few feet. The woman on the roof was jumping up to meet him, another glass bottle in her hands, just a little bit too slow. Joel, leaping down to the rooftop, kicked her in the face so hard that Bill thought he heard something snap even from this distance, and both of them disappeared behind the parapet. Bill heard the bottle smash apart.

Tess literally kicked Bill in the ass, demanding, "Move it!" Bill stumbled to his feet and onto the board, suspended over its dizzying height. He glanced down just once; the narrow alley below was half-full of wandering infected. As he moved carefully forwards along the board, Joel and the trader came into view; he was astride her, pinning her hands to the hot roof. Bill heard Tess' quick footsteps behind him as soon as he touched down on the other side.

She seemed satisfied with their current tactical advantage, and sounded almost cheerful as she addressed him: "Watch the door, Bill. We don't need any surprises, here." Bill nodded, positioned himself to keep the rooftop door in view. Tess directed her attention to the woman now pinned under Joel's weight. "Where's your partner?" Tess demanded. The flattened trader shook her head, her angry breath snorting through her nose. Joel released her wrists and sat fully upright to calmly dig another shiv out of his pack; she flailed ineffectively at him, empty-handed, her arms too short to reach his face, too thin to do real damage. And then Joel leaned forward again, not bothering to grab those frantic arms, and began to cut her.

The first scream as he sliced into the top half of her ear brought an answering chorus from the runners below them, and Bill flinched, looking reflexively at their surroundings, then determinedly trained his gaze back on the door. Joel continued to saw efficiently at the cartilage in his hands, and Bill wasn't even sure whether he should be more afraid of him or the runners at this point. The woman underneath him was writhing, her hands grabbing futilely at Joel's arm, his face, in an effort to make it stop. Joel made his way through the ear in a ragged circle, tossed it on the rooftop, and sat upright again.

"Where's your partner?" Tess repeated. She hadn't moved an inch. Joel impassively moved his knife to the other ear, let the blade rest there.

"Get fucked," their captive replied, her voice cracking. Joel began slicing his way through the remaining ear, grunting a little as he shifted his weight to keep leverage when the woman flailed at him. The second ear flew onto the rooftop.

"Where's your partner?" Tess strode so that she was looking down into the woman's face. Joel laid his blade flat on her face again.

"She's gonna fucking kill you," was all the response she got.

"Joel," Tess announced, "Hand me that. Grab her head." Joel pressed the handle of the knife he was using into Tess' hand and swiftly scooted up and off the other woman's torso, his fingers digging firmly into her short hair.

The trader had about five seconds of twisting wildly, trying to get out of Joel's grasp, before Tess threw herself onto the woman's legs, pinning her in the same way Joel had. Tess grabbed the waistband of the trader's jeans and sliced down through it, then kept yanking at the fabric until the other woman's crotch was in view. Bill looked away as the trader tried futilely to cover her snarls of pubic hair with desperate hands. He'd wanted the traders dead, but this was getting a little fucking crazy for him. He had no idea what vicious routine the smugglers were enacting, and tried to keep his gaze on the door so he wouldn't have to have an idea. He couldn't help but keep watching out of the corner of his eye, though. The situation did not improve.

"Hands, Joel," Tess demanded, and Joel slammed a knee into the downed woman's shoulder so he could reach down and again grip her wrists in his strong hands.

Tess swiftly slapped the flat of the blade right into the trader's crotch, and Bill flinched, biting his lip. "Kee-rist," he mumbled.

"Where," Tess said once again, "Is your _fucking_ partner?" The muscles in her lean right arm were beginning to stand out in sharp relief as she slowly pressed the flat of the blade into her victim's exposed vulva. Tess' arm slowly began to rotate the blade into a more threatening position.

"Eat shit," the trader blurted.

"Lost cause, Tess," Joel grunted at her.

"Yeah," Tess agreed, eying the trader's furious face. "Bill, you've been in here before?"

Bill nodded, trying to keep his gaze on the door rather than the surreal spectacle unfolding on the rooftop. "Looted it years ago. Pretty simple layout."

"Fine," Tess answered, and jerked her body forwards to bury the knife up to its hilt into the other woman's neck. It snapped as the dying woman began to buck her body in response. "Shit, sorry, Joel. Broke it. You want the other one back?"

Joel shook his head dismissively and released the trader, directing his next question at Bill: "It's clean inside?" The woman's hands clawed ineffectively at the blade cutting off her airway. Both Joel and Tess were rising to their feet, ignoring the grotesque death spasms between them.

Bill, however, was having a lot of trouble not staring at the dying woman's thrashing body. The runners were still howling below them. "Yeah, was last time. Got a lot of sealed rooms, but no infected inside. Judging by the crowd outside, there probably still aren't." The trader looked pleadingly into his eyes, blood pouring from her mouth. He turned his face back to the door so he wouldn't have to watch any more. "Stairwells aren't locked; I broke all the handles out. We'll just have to watch out for this one's partner, and I bet she sure as shit knows we're coming now. Didn't have to torture her like that, Tess."

Tess was turning away from the bleeding woman at her feet as though the trader no longer existed. "Didn't have to do any of this, Bill. You asked us to, and we said yes. You want to take it back?" Bill shook his head and kept his mouth shut.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hold up," Joel grunted, and scooped a heavy metal pipe from behind the parapet. Presumably, the trader had been stashing it there to use on them, but hadn't been quite fast enough to grab it. He advanced towards the metal door leading from the rooftop to the top floor and pulled it half-open, then got the pipe he'd scored wedged into the top gap above the hinges. Grunting, he wrenched backwards, hard, and the door screamed its way free of the frame. Joel got one hand on the door's handle, the other wrapped around the far edge, and he juggled it until he was holding it in front of himself like an impromptu riot shield. "All right, let's find her partner," he finally announced, and moved inside, tilting the door to get through.

Bill was raising his eyebrows, but if Joel wanted to play the bulletproof tough guy, Bill was not about to challenge him for the role. Instead, he just crouched for a moment inside the now-empty doorway, visualizing the map of the corridors inside. "Right," he told the smugglers. "Top floor is going to be a tough run, but we can make it." He squeezed his way past Joel to lead the way down the stairs, hearing that heavy door bump down behind him. He stopped as he reached the open doorway to the sixth floor. "All right, this is the tough part."

Joel sank his door/shield to the floor, squinting into the dimly-lit hallway. Tess squeezed so closely up behind her partner that she had to turn her pistol sideways against his back. "What's tough about it?" she wanted to know.

The hallway they were facing was what Bill's mother would have called a shotgun hallway – while there were cubicles lining the sides, what they were looking at was mostly one long stretch leading to a final door, which itself was barely cracked open. There were enough windows to give the place enough light to see by, but it was far from bright. Bill racked his brains frantically. "Quarantined," he said, as the memory surfaced. "Everything on this floor is military-quarantined except for that end door. Lower floors, not so much. Those'll have more open rooms, but they're easier to check. If she's on this floor, the other broad could be in any one of the cubicles. No telling where she's hiding."

Tess was slipping past both men to scramble forwards. There were so many sad and shattered items – tilted cubicle walls, filing cabinets, upended desks – that she didn't have to sprint very far before she could take shelter behind one of the cabinets on the right side of the hallway, its drawers yawning open. Joel kneeled, holding the door in front of him as a shield, and Bill hurriedly hunkered down behind Joel, taking over Tess' vacated position.

"She could be in one of the quarantined rooms, too," Tess whispered back at them. "If she's really adventurous. How are we going to do this?"

"No. Nope." Joel was tilting his head from side to side, and then finally poked his head around the edge of the door to make eye contact with Tess. " She's in there," He announced, pointing at the barely-shut door at the end of the hall. Bill stared in disbelief at his back, unsettled by the uncanny certainty of the other man's decision.

"You hear her?" Tess asked, and Joel nodded. "Okay. You rush it. We'll take cover."

Bill was again feeling slightly out of the loop. He'd lost all control of the situation before they'd even made it across the board between the roofs, and he could feel his heart beating so fast that he couldn't focus properly on anything else. Something about the hallway was wrong, something about it was strange. "Wait," he said. "Wait a goddamned minute." He scrambled forwards to crouch behind a toppled chunk of cubicle wall covering half the left side of the hallway, and, from there, got the whole hallway in his line of sight, peering, waiting for his brain to figure out the puzzle he'd received.

"What for?" Tess asked him.

"There's . . . just . . . wait!" Bill was becoming increasingly frustrated by his failure to figure out the problem, and her interruption wasn't helping a bit. "You got a fuckin' date to get to or something? Just hold your horses."

Joel was growling behind him, which also wasn't helping, though Bill could understand that more easily: between the metal door he was holding and his impressive stature, Joel was the biggest, most obvious target in the hallway, and Bill knew the Texan was not willing to tolerate that vulnerability for too much longer.

"Just _wait,_" Bill said. It was starting to solidify in his head. There was some debris here that his memory told him hadn't been present on his last trip. Scrap metal.

"Goin' in," Joel announced abruptly, and swung the metal door back up in front of him as he shot to his feet and began to charge. Bill's brain kicked into a panicked overdrive as he realized what he was looking at: the two traders hadn't just snuck their way past his traps, they'd disarmed and stolen some of them, then used them to protect this hallway. Joel was heading directly into a fine tripwire hooked up to a high-powered explosive.

"Stop!" Bill yelled at Joel's charging back. "STOP STOP STOP!" But Joel had far too much inertia powering his movement to stop in any reasonable amount of time. He hit the tripwire with the door, still sprinting.

**BLAM!**

The makeshift bomb exploded, and all three hundred pounds of Joel and the metal door were lifted clear into the air and thrown backwards past his crouching allies. The door cracked into Joel's face and chest, then flew further as his shocked hands released it, smashing its way sideways into a cubicle, but Joel himself thudded to a stop just past their position.

"Oh, _Jesus_." Bill had ducked himself down into cover and was staring at Joel's twitching body. But Tess was already scrambling to her partner.

"Cover me," she demanded, and Bill did his best to aim a gun towards the doorway, squinting in vain through the drifting smoke that the explosion had created.

"Joel? Come on, Texas. Breathe." She was beginning to drag Joel's body towards the filing cabinet she'd been crouching behind, to get him out of the open. All Bill could make out, squinting through the dust, was that the downed man appeared to be jerking convulsively. "Breathe, Texas. Take a breath. You got the wind knocked out of you. Come on, Joel." She'd moved him to relative safety. Bill gave up on trying to get a clear sight to the door, shoved his back up against the cover of his fallen cubicle wall, and eyed the smugglers instead, unsure if he could help.

Joel took one long, shuddering breath, and then his whole body relaxed, eyes closed, jaw hanging open. He looked dead. The possibility of legendarily unstoppable Joel having been taken out for good was _terrifying_ for Bill. If this bitch could take down that murderous machine, then he and Tess were fucked beyond belief.

He began asking: "Did he just –" and then the blade from his smoke-concealed assailant was against his neck. But not slicing into it. Not just yet. "Tess," he croaked.

Tess had been checking the pulse at Joel's throat with one lean hand and froze once she looked over at Bill. While the two of them had been consumed with just how hurt Joel might be, the woman they'd been targeting had slipped her way to the barricade. She had a machete pinned to Bill's carotid with her right hand, and was now wrapping the fingers of her left into his hair to make her grip more secure.

"I will kill him," the woman declared, "Unless you drop your guns and let me go."

Tess slowly, carefully, turned from kneeling over Joel to sitting casually on her rump, her wrists resting on her pulled-up knees. "So you . . . just want to run out into the infected outside? You want to get pulled to pieces?"

"I'll take my chances," the woman replied, and lowered her machete a little to dig it into Bill's clavicle. He felt a slow trickle of blood begin to seep its way down his chest. "I'll do it. I'll kill this motherfucker."

"Let me tell you," Tess continued, apparently at complete ease with the situation, "The three mistakes you just made. First, you've overestimated how much I care about the guy you're trying to use as a hostage." Bill swallowed; he could feel his throat press against the blade as he did so. "Second, you've underestimated how much I care about the guy who's lying on the floor right now because you blew him up. Third, the fact that you're using a knife and not a gun tells me that you are right out of ammunition. There's a dead body on the rooftop that you might care about. We cut up your partner until she died. We cut her _everywhere_. But that's nothing compared to what I'm going to do to you. Go ahead." Tess pointed at Bill with her chin. "Slice him. If you do it, I'm going to cut off chunks of your partner and make you eat them, you cunt. You're going to die when your stomach bursts because you've been force-fed too much of your dead girlfriend."

Bill could feel the machete at his throat beginning to shake, and he hoped to Christ that Tess was bluffing. His captor spoke, her voice trembling: "I can make a deal."

Tess cocked her head. "Oh? What do you have to offer that we can't take when you're dead?"

There was nothing but silence above him. Bill flinched as the machete cut more deeply into him when the shaking intensified. His neck stung as it gathered tiny, bleeding notches.

"Yeah," Tess grinned. "That's what I thought." Bill choked as the flat side of the machete slammed its way up into his throat, the blade beginning to tilt its way in under his jaw, and he was so intensely interested in not dying, shooting his hands up to the machete to fight it off, that he couldn't understand all the loud noises that began to happen around him.

Bill was suddenly blinking at a fully-conscious Joel, his ears ringing so loudly that he wasn't sure if he could even initiate a conversation about what the hell had just happened. He kept blinking as his brain reconstructed the last few seconds; the moaning of the woman on the floor behind him helped him figure it out. Joel, still seated in the spot on the floor Tess had dragged him to, had popped up like an insane jack-in-the-box and put a round right through the shoulder of the arm holding the machete that had been working at Bill's neck. The big man was beginning to lurch into motion, his face drawn with fury, and Bill was shocked to see Tess shove him back onto the floor and fix him there with a glare. Tess herself rose and walked over to their failed extortionist, who was whimpering and writhing on the floor.

"Head or gut?" Tess asked, her pistol leveled towards the floor, and it took Bill a minute to realize she was actually directing the question at the wounded woman. "Want to 'take your chances' with a gut wound? Or should I just make it quick?"

Bill peered past the cubicle wall at their target; she was curling up, trying to grab for her fallen machete. She gasped out at Tess: "You fucking b-"

Tess swiveled her stance and pulled the trigger; her question had been definitively answered with "head." The other woman jerked, then slumped into death. Joel went back to picking himself up off the floor, while Bill stayed in place, eying Tess warily. She was already rifling the corpse's pockets.

"Jesus, Tess, that was pretty fucked up," Bill ventured.

"Mm?" Tess had located the dead woman's empty gun and was checking it over.

"The thing where you said you were going to make her eat her buddy."

"Oh." Tess shrugged. "Wouldn't have done it. Too much work."


	5. Chapter 5

"Where's the other one?" Joel asked, having made it all the way to his feet. Both Tess and Bill looked at him quizzically. Joel panted angrily at them until he wobbled, slammed sharply into the cubicle wall behind him, and grabbed the top of it for balance. "Bill's bleeding," he announced. He was partially covered in dust from the drywall the bomb had destroyed, and one hand was bleeding significantly - the one that had been wrapped around the edge of the door, Bill realized. Tess was darting towards her partner, had her own hands grabbing at him, and as she did so, Bill thought he could hazard a guess as to why Joel's two sentences didn't seem to fit together well.

"Joel, look at me." The bearded smuggler's head was weaving slightly, and Bill became more convinced that his guess was right. "Okay, look at my finger. Follow my finger." Tess held up her right index finger and moved it slowly left and right in front of Joel's eyes. Even Bill could tell, from his position on the floor, that Joel wasn't having a lot of success in tracking it. "Down. Lie back down, Texas."

"Tess," Joel protested, "I'm fine. I just goddamned shot someone about to cut Bill's throat."

"You sure did," Tess agreed. "Took her out. You also just got blown off your feet and landed on your head. Lie down, big guy. You took one hell of a blast."

"We got to get the second one," Joel scowled back, already losing his focus so badly that he was barely looking in her direction.

"You just shot the second one. Then you watched me kill her." Tess corrected him. She had both her hands in his armpits, holding him steady. In response, Joel stared at her like she was insane, and pressed one hand to his chest, gasping a little. She cocked her head at him: "Does it hurt there? Maybe crack some ribs?"

"Mm," Joel grunted in agreement. He began locking his bloody fingers behind her neck in an effort to keep himself up.

Tess responded by letting him slowly drop back to the floor. "If you don't lie yourself down right now, I'm ditching you, and you can find your own way back to the zone. Take a break, Texas, there's nobody left to kill. Bill, how about you make sure of that?"

Bill was pretty sure that if there was anyone else around - infected or not - they'd already have shown up after all that racket. But he dug a kerchief out of his pack and shoved it up around the cuts on his chin and neck. They all felt pretty shallow; he'd just disinfect them, and he'd be fine. Looking down at himself, he could tell the top of his shirt was already a bloody mess, but he could put up with that. He got up, dusting off his knees, and began doing a swift check of the cubicles surrounding them.

Joel, sagging drastically, kept his hands in place behind Tess' head as she lowered him. "Gonna sit down," he said, already three-quarters of his way to the floor.

"Yeah," Tess agreed. "You stepped on a bomb and took a metal door to the face. Lie down until you figure out how hurt you are, then we'll decide how to get ourselves safe." Joel sighed at her, clinging to her body as gravity took over and his ass finally hit the carpet.

"Kill me if I'm infected," he said, his fingers now plucking urgently at her clothing. "Bullet in the brain."

"You're not infected, Texas, they had some kind of booby trap set up in the hallway and it kicked your ass."

Bill, peeking under a desk, couldn't keep himself from interjecting, bitterly, "One of _my_ booby traps, goddamn thieves." He immediately regretted it as Tess swiveled her head to frown at him with pure fury, creasing her own bruised face, then turned back to Joel, who she was still gently wrestling into cooperation.

"Fine," she amended. "Joel? Can you hear me? Bill blew you up because he's an idiot who can't take care of his shit. He also can't watch a fucking hallway. Stop trying to think, partner, because you're terrible at it right now."

"I could use an ice pack," Joel stated, a request so bizarrely unsuited to the reality they were occupying that Bill silently raised his eyebrows as he searched further. Nothing so far. "We got any?"

"Not really an option," Tess said softly. "Work with me, Joel."

Bill was beginning to feel awkward as a witness to the bizarrely disjointed conversation, and had made his way back around the room by the time Tess got Joel's pack off so she could lay him on his back, shoving the pack under his feet. Joel looked punch-drunk, disoriented, and was certainly talking as though he might be concussed. Bill shivered a little, trying to ignore the unsettling fact that Joel had managed to whip his body into motion and fire a precision shot in that state. That man was going to be lethal until the second he died.

Tess was bitching at her unsteady partner, and he was muttering at her in return, though Bill could only half-hear the conversation. Something along the lines of Joel insisting he was absolutely fine and Tess telling him to shut up and stay down. She was pressing her fingers lightly through Joel's thick hair, searching for the damage, and he was flinching in response, half-heartedly fumbling at her wrists to push her probing hands away.

"Come on, Texas," she said, yanking now at the buttons on his shirt, "Chippendale time. Let me have a look at where you got hit."

Bill moved to check over the dead woman himself, disturbed by Tess's oddly flirtatious language to her dazed partner in front of a corpse she'd just created. The shot Joel had fired had shattered the trader's shoulder, and Bill shivered again at the idea of just how close to his head it had hit. There were no more weapons on her – Tess had taken care of that – and a cursory search of her pockets turned up nothing. "Their stash has to be down here," he declared. "Gonna go check it." He shambled towards the room she'd been holed up in, glad for an excuse to leave behind the terrifying smugglers and whatever weird shit they were doing.

Given the near-disaster he'd just been through, Bill was much more cautious and thorough about checking the room as he entered it, nearly on tiptoe as he scanned for more of his stolen explosives. None were apparent, though both traders' oversized packs were tumbled together on the floor. Bill guessed that the women had left them here to so keep themselves fast on their feet, though it clearly hadn't been enough. Just in case the bags were booby-trapped, he poked first one, then the other, with the end of his shotgun, wincing in anticipation. When they failed to explode, he gave in and sank to his knees to work at the flap on one of them.

"Great," he announced to the room as the denim came into view. The pants Frank had demanded were right on top, rolled up neatly. Getting his hands on them was gonna make domestic life a hell of a lot easier when he got back. He upended the pack entirely and shook its contents out. The jeans and some other assorted clothing hit the floor, along with a slightly rancid-smelling bag of what turned out to be dried jerky, some bottled water, and his pilfered gas masks. He quickly ransacked the second pack, and sighed a little with relief when he found what he was looking for - a large, tattered plastic bag holding a jumble of yellowing and slightly-cracked prescription pill bottles. It also appeared to be the repository for the dead traders' weapon cache and other miscellaneous odds and ends - some books, some more food. Bill eyed a fine-grained small whetstone longingly, wondered if he could talk Tess into letting him have it. Technically, the deal had only been for the smuggler pair to take the medications and masks, but Bill had the feeling he was on some thin ice with her by this point. He shrugged, shoved the clothing into his own pack, then began rummaging through the medical supply bag in curiosity.

"There's an actual dent in his side from hitting a filing cabinet or something," Tess announced, stepping into the room behind him. "I think he might even be in shock. He's shaking a little. That door just _smashed_ him when the bomb went off. You find painkillers? I need Joel feeling good enough to stay up and in motion."

"Good thing he was behind it like that, though, or he'd be hamburger by now." Bill shook his head involuntarily; he had trouble believing Joel hadn't had his feet blown clear off. "You sure you want painkillers in him? It'll slow him down. Maybe knock him out. Maybe kill him, if he's already kind of fucked up." He was peering at the labels on the bottles, though, searching for something to give her.

"Well, he's not exactly Mr. Speedy at the moment, regardless." Tess sounded a little shrill, as though she was trying to control her voice. "Anyway, do you know how much shit I'd have to shove down his throat to slow him down? He's the size of a Mack truck. He just soaks it up. I can't even get him drunk."

Bill shrugged and tossed her a bottle whose faded label indicated it was Percocet. "Your call." Tess clapped her hands shut around it in mid-air, and Bill continued to dig, peering at labels. The child-proof bottles were old, smeared, cloudy. "Can't tell what all of 'em are," he called back over his shoulder. "Whoever you sell these to is going to be taking their chances."

"Well," Tess said quietly, "I can sure as shit tell what this is." Bill cocked an ear towards her cautiously; her tone was so smoothly calm that he could tell something was off, but wasn't sure he wanted to know what.

"What do you mean?" Bill was again pawing through the bottles when a stinging spray of small objects smacked across the back of his head. "What the _shit_, Tess?" He squinted at the floor to bring into focus the debris that had landed in front of him. It looked like . . . pebbles? White pebbles? He picked one up to examine it; sure enough, it was a chalky-white little stone.

"Open up another bottle, Bill," Tell's voice demanded, and he shot a look over his shoulder at her. She scraped a handful of actual pills off her palm and back into the bottle she was still holding, closed it, dropped it carelessly. "Any one of 'em. Open it."

He had one container down by his knees that he hadn't been able to decipher the label of, and he grabbed it, twisted the top down and off, then peered in. There were round, white, factory-pressed pills sitting inside, though they did seem to be resting on a layer of cotton. Bill fumbled down through them with one thick finger, and pulled the cotton out. Underneath, there were more pebbles. The plastic bottles were so old and worn that they'd effectively disguised their contents, but it was clear that the two traders had been hoaxing him with the thin film of actual pills on top. And even those, Bill was slowly realizing, might be fake as well.

"Oh, you _assholes_," Bill said to the bottle. He was down on all fours now, tumbling the bottles around, squinting at them. They mostly seemed to be similar. He was beginning to feel almost no regret about what he'd more or less silently allowed the smugglers to do to the women they'd butchered. He pressed his hands flat on the floor and grimaced in helpless rage. "You _utter fucks_."

"My thoughts exactly," Tess growled, followed by an ominous silence. Bill barely noticed; he was grinding his teeth, unable to think of anything but his own frustration. He didn't realize she wasn't talking about the dead traders until Tess' left heel stomped smartly down onto his right hand and her pistol was already pressed into the back of his head.


	6. Chapter 6

Bill flinched at the pain – she wasn't actually crushing his fingers, not yet, but the heavy heel of Tess' boot felt like a promise, and he knew she could work up enough force to do so in an instant. He froze; this far from home and Frank's help, a broken right hand would render him dead just as effectively as the bullet she was threatening to fire into his skull.

"This relationship, Bill," she growled at the back of his head, "Just stopped being profitable for us."

He was effectively trapped; all his weapons were arranged to optimize his right-handedness in case he needed them in a hurry, and he knew he was no gymnast. By the time he managed to twist his left hand around to them or to grab at her ankle, she would have already pulled the trigger as many times as necessary. He tensed, frantically trying to figure out options to take her down. "Wait a goddamned minute!" he yelled at the floor.

Tess, as though she was reading his mind, began to increase the pressure on his knuckles. "I'm waiting," she told him. "What do you have to give us to make this good? Hm? Because all I'm seeing right now is some rocks and a couple of guns so old their stocks are rotting. What you got for me, Bill? A hidden cache of military rations? A bazooka? Solar-powered generator? Maybe a magic wand to fix Joel's head?" The fierceness in her voice was increasing, and she'd begun to grind the heel of her boot slightly into his fingers.

Bill insisted: "Look me in the eye for this, Tess. You owe me that. Look me in the goddamned eye if you're gonna kill me."

There was a pause, during which the pressure on Bill's hand didn't lift, and he watched two drops of moisture hit the floor in front of his face: first, a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose, and second, a bead of thickening blood dripping down from his chin, escaping its way from the bandanna over the cuts on his neck. "All right," Tess finally agreed. "I'll give you that. But don't move until I say so."

Bill felt the pressure of her foot shift on his hand and again flinched a little, involuntarily, as he felt her left hand fumbling at his belt. They'd done too many runs together, in too-difficult circumstances, for Tess not to know where he usually kept every weapon in his possession, and she began to fish them out, one by one, and slide them across the floor away from him until they hit the far wall. His kukri. His revolver. His shotgun. He watched them go with a sense of rising desperation. He'd left his bow with Frank, who'd presumably taken it back to town. Not that it mattered; it was hardly a weapon he could have concealed from her.

"Bill." Tess had paused in frisking him. She twisted the barrel of her pistol a little bit against the back of his head. "Do you think you're faster than me?"

He didn't have to lie. "No."

"Do you think I won't shoot you?"

Again, no lie: "No." His right hand was beginning to cramp. Then, blessedly, the boot of her heel was lifted, and he saw its toe turn so that she could back away, placing herself between him and his confiscated weaponry.

"All right, Bill. Get yourself settled." He huffed, rocking himself back onto his broad rear end and settling his spine against the wall, flexing his right hand experimentally. It was sore, but nothing felt seriously damaged. "Now," she continued, and he raised his eyes to meet hers. "What. Do. You. Have. To. Give. Me." It wasn't really a question.

"Nothin', Tess," Bill admitted. He wasn't sure if it was helping to be honest, but he was pretty sure that lying would turn out worse, in the long run. "I got nothin'. It's been a bad month. I was making a deal with you to get some _pants_ out of this trip, for Christ's sake, that's how dry it's been. You know a lot of the local stuff is tapped out."

"So you have a debt you can't pay." Tess rolled her shoulders slightly, easing her stance. Bill had thought looking her in the face would make things better, but now that he could actually see her relaxing her way into being comfortable with his execution, he thought it might be worse. At least it had bought him a little thinking time. Tess continued: "A debt you have no idea how to pay. That's pretty much all I need to hear, Bill."

"Wait a goddamned minute!" This was all so frustratingly unfair. "I just got fucked over here, too!"

"Yeah, you sure did." Tess' nostrils flared. Her eyes burned hot at him over her bruised cheekbones. "Bad business, Bill. I've got a partner back there who might be bleeding so bad inside I won't be able to get him back to the zone. Do you know how banged up he has to be to let me keep him down like that? And I've got to get home, with or without him, with almost nothing to show for it. So excuse me if I don't give a shit that you're too stupid to realize when you're being gamed by a couple of con artists."

"Tess!" His only glimmer of hope was that there must be some reason she still hadn't fired, and he was damned if he was going to go down quietly. "Don't make this worse! I get a lot of my valuable shit from travelers like these guys, and you ain't gonna see a thing from any more of the ones that go through here if you blow my head off. Okay, I know Joel got pretty fucked up just now, but you're still gonna need me, no matter what happens to him. We can keep this going, you and me. You can get a new partner, no problem. Boston's a big zone. Hell, it's not like you and Joel even –"

"Tess." Joel was suddenly filling the doorway to the room, leaning on the frame, and Bill was so startled by his apparently alert and upright appearance that he didn't manage to get to the phrase _fuck each other_, then was immediately glad he hadn't as he watched the cold little flames in Tess' eyes burn at him. "Tess. Leave it."

"You're supposed to be lying down, Texas," Tess snapped back at him, without sparing a glance. "And Bill here is not supposed to be putting our lives in danger for six fucking aspirin."

"I just needed a minute to wake up," Joel drawled, dangling his backpack from his now-bandaged hand. His clothing was heavily rumpled, and now, through the drywall dust across his face and clothing, there were streaks of blood from that wounded hand. But he looked infinitely calmer than his partner. "Heard you two having a little disagreement."

Tess was actually baring her top front teeth a little, eyes and gun still focused on Bill. "The drugs are a scam. This trip has been _hell_, Joel." The other smuggler nodded, slowly, making a noise in his throat that indicated agreement. "Bill hasn't done a single thing right since we met up. If you think it's worthwhile to go through this again with him, then you better go lie back down until you can think straight."

Bill thought about again countering with the fact that it had been Tess who started the kamikaze rush against the alley full of runners, but continued to hold his tongue, wary of Tess' clearly non-existent fuse. Instead, he tried looking hopefully at Joel. It was both unbelievable and lucky as hell for Bill that the big smuggler was back on his feet already. The guy bounced back so quickly, he must be made of rubber.

"Yeah," Joel concurred. "He sure knows he screwed up. Look at him. He's not gonna pull anything like this again, because he knows you'll chop his balls off. Let this time be a favor. Think what we could get if Bill owed us a big, big favor."

"A favor," Bill agreed solemnly. "I didn't fuck with you on purpose, Tess."

"How many times," Joel continued, "Have we got credit from him for a month when we came up short on our end?"

"He said he's got nothing to give," Tess protested.

"I bet he don't, right now. Now ain't forever, Tess. But dead is."

Tess kept glaring at Bill for another thirty seconds, while the seated man felt his bowels clench uneasily. "Fine," she finally declared, and lowered her gun. She scooped the Percocet bottle back off the floor and tossed it in Joel's general direction. He jerked awkwardly to catch it, still favoring one side. "See if any of that shit does anything for you. It might just be vitamins or something."

Joel studied the bottle carefully. "Well, if you hadn't killed that second woman, we might have maybe asked her just how crooked her operation was." Tess bit those bared teeth into her lower lip so hard Bill could see her jaw clench. Instead of responding, she shoved Joel slightly out of the way so she could stalk out of the room past him, and he gasped, again fumbling at one side of his chest. Tess didn't even slow down, her angry back receding through the dim clouds of still-settling dust.


	7. Chapter 7

Bill relaxed slightly, and crawled forward to scoop up the bottles still on the floor. He was still frightened half out of his mind, and wasn't sure whether to thank the smuggler, make further promises, or what. "There's at least _some_ stuff in here," he told Joel. "What do you want? You want to take the bottles like they are? They all got a couple of pills in 'em, looks like, but I don't even know if they're labeled right. I don't know if I'm looking at Tylenol or laxatives."

"You'd be dead a couple times over today without me, Bill." Joel had shaken out a couple of the possibly-fake Percocet into his palm and was regarding them thoughtfully. "Without me getting between you and a couple of women wanting you dead."

Like he needed to be reminded. "Fuck off, Joel. I'm not in the mood. You want the fuckin' pills or not?"

"Don't want you to forget it, Bill." Joel gulped what he was holding, and shot a look over his shoulder at the sound of Tess' footsteps ascending the stairs back to the roof. "Yeah, just get 'em all back in the bag. We'll take 'em as is. You got the clothes you were after? We'll take everything else, too. Here, should be room in this." Joel tossed his pack at Bill.

Bill sighed a "yes" at him, mentally saying a sad goodbye to the little whetstone he'd been craving. He shot a cautious look up at Joel, who was blinking serenely down at him, as Bill stretched to recover his weapons. Both Tess' and Joel's behavior was always bewildering, unpredictable for him, but this was a man who'd variously threatened and ignored Bill for most of the day's events, and Bill had no idea why Joel had just now lumbered to his rescue. "All right, thanks," Bill finally said. "Didn't expect you to . . . well. Thanks."

"Mm." Joel had his arms folded, was calmly watching Bill. "Interestin' to learn that you think I'm a disposable part of this arrangement."

Oh, god, Bill did not need any more of this shit today. He needed so badly to not be playing this dangerous game any more. He exasperatedly jammed his weapons back into place much harder than he needed to, then began loading up Joel's pack with the items on the floor in front of him. "Come on, Joel, I thought she was gonna blow my head off."

"Mm-hm."

Bill kept himself occupied with the task his hands were performing. "And, what, are you going to blame me for thinkin' you might not be gettin' up again? You looked like hell."

"Nope," Joel confirmed. Bill stole a glance at the smuggler, who was slowly, thoughtfully shaking his head. "Sure not gonna blame you for that, neither. You were right about that first part. I am disposable, Bill. And so is Tess. And so are you. All of us would find a way to make it without the others, because that is what we do. We're survivors. We keep going. Tess . . ." Joel squinted thoughtfully at the ceiling for a second, then looked back down to Bill, who was still packing. "Tess does not need to be reminded of how disposable she is today. Not today."

Bill began to scour the traders' remaining supplies to see if anything was worth keeping. "Women. What, that time of the month?"

Joel's mouth actually dropped open for a few seconds, and he again peered behind him into the dim hallway, then back at Bill. "I've no idea about that, and I would . . . very seriously suggest that if you don't want me to have to save your life _again_, you never say that shit. Ever. Again. 'Specially not loud enough for her to hear. We had a bad trip, Bill. A bad one."

"Yeah," Bill said, slightly chagrined. "I saw the bruises on her face."

"She got reminded today," Joel continued, "That she might be disposable. Waited too long to pull the trigger. Her face? She waited too long to pull the trigger, and she ended up with her face right into a concrete slab. The weight of it grabbin' on her pulled her over, when I was trying to get it off her because she still couldn't pull the trigger. " Joel paused.

Bill shrugged. "Sorry she broke her-"

Joel held up his hand. "We ran into a little bunch of the, you know. The infected 'bout this big?" Joel held out his hand at waist height. "You don't see 'em so often, you know why. The ones that used to be kids. Little kids. Ones we found musta been from some little colony or somethin'. Real fresh. Ain't too hard to take down, but she don't like doing it. She's going to be pulling the trigger a little too early for a while, because she's pissed off about pulling it too late. She's pissed off at how hard it is for her to kill a thing that used to be an eight-year-old."

Bill did "know why" there were so few juvenile infected; when attacked, children tended to be either immediately ripped to pieces, or the infection would spread through their small bodies so quickly that they ended up transforming into rotting mounds of fungus within weeks. He wasn't sure how to respond; it was actually odd to think of Tess being emotionally vulnerable enough to be upset over infected children. He shook Joel's pack to settle the contents, then grunted his way to his feet. Joel was still looking seriously at him.

"All right," Bill concluded. "I get it. But she's gonna get you both killed if she keeps going the way she is right now. Here, does this feel right?" He hoisted the pack and handed it over to Joel.

Joel accepted it and slung it onto his back, and did a little wriggle to test. He flinched and pressed at his chest again, but nodded. "Feels good enough for the trip home."

Bill asked, not sure if he wanted to know: "So did you take care of all of them? The, you know, the infected kids? Should I be worried? My place is built to keep the big ones out, not little ones."

Joel nodded again. "Burned 'em all," he declared, then stared at the floor for a minute. He actually looked lost, hurt, an expression Bill wasn't sure he'd ever seen on the smuggler's face before. "They scream just like real ones when they die, you know. Maybe that's what bugs her." He looked up again into Bill's eyes, his face hardening again. "I meant it, Bill. We're all three of us disposable. Don't you forget that when you go thinking of this favor. Don't think you're not."

"I won't," Bill promised. "Let's just. Let's go. Want to get home before dark."

Joel nodded, and the two men joined Tess on the roof, where she swore at them for being so slow before they began their way out of the suburb and back to their respective home bases.

* * *

Despite his best efforts, it was already dark by the time Bill made it back to the barbed-wire nightmare that used to be Lincoln and now was just "home." He hated being out at night; it made him twitchy, anxious. His heart was beating high and fast, and when he saw the candlelight flickering in the windows of the bar, he had to swallow hard with relief and gratitude. Much as he'd wanted to kill Frank earlier, it was an absolute blessing to come home to someone who would literally keep a candle burning for him.

Frank, sure enough, was inside. He was actually lying on his back on the bar, stretched out to full length, dressed only in his socks, jockey shorts, and one of his hideous Hawaiian shirts. His pants, so tattered that they essentially no longer had a crotch, were laid out on the floor as a silent protest. As soon as Bill closed the door behind him, the other man said: "Don't want to hear how pissed off you are that I left."

"Fine." Bill stumbled his way into a booth, and stared at the table. He'd been running so high on fear that he was starting to crash without its presence. All he could think was that he now owed a favor to the most efficiently lethal duo in existence. "At least you left a note."

Frank was still on his back, gazing at the ceiling. "They were chucking shit at my head every five minutes. Got a stapler right in the face and decided I didn't need to be there any more."

"Could've used you," Bill responded. Then he remembered. "Oh." He pulled the folded layers of denim out of the top of his pack and put them on the tabletop. "Your pants. Couple of pairs."

"Good." Frank rolled himself off the bar and strolled his way over. He stopped short before he made it all the way. "Bill? Oh, shit. Oh, shit, your neck. Are you okay?" The bleeding had stopped, but the kerchief around Bill's neck was beginning to stink, stiffened with his clotted blood.

"Yeah." Bill couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice. "All good."

"Shit, Bill, you've been bitten. You're bit, aren't you." Frank was backing up, now.

"No, dammit!" Bill threw his pack onto the floor.

"Then why is your face telling me you're scared?" Frank demanded.

"I just . . . it was a bad trip. Those smugglers. They're dangerous people. They can just . . . they'll be saying these totally normal, reasonable things, and then they're fuckin' . . . torturing people to death."

"You've said." Frank squinted at him. "Why do you think I wasn't interested in hanging around long enough to meet them?"

"They almost killed me, Frank. I don't even know. You know all this blood? One of those, those fucking trader whores was slicing me up, and they killed her, but then they almost killed me, and I just . . ." Bill ran out of words and began shaking his head.

"All right," Frank said quietly. He hovered just beyond the edge of the table for another minute, then padded his way forward and slipped one hand down around Bill's shoulders. Bill couldn't resist; he needed the comfort so badly that he turned to bury his face in Frank's belly, Hawaiian shirt and all. He gave himself the luxury of one sobbing breath, a breath that sounded much like Joel's had when Bill thought he was dying. "All right, Bill. You're home now."

"I owe them a favor," Bill choked out. "A big one. Because of your stupid fucking pants." That wasn't entirely true, but it made him feel good to say it.

"Bill . . ." Frank's body had stiffened in resentment. "Jesus, can't you not be an asshole for five minutes?"

"Fuck you."

"Come on. I'm going to help you get cleaned up, and then we'll bed down here for the night."

"They stole some traps. Those traders. Gotta check the traps in the morning."

"Bill," Frank said, "Don't start doing your goddamned OCD shit about it right now. Leave it."

That "leave it" was so precisely what Joel had said to Tess that it tore a little hole in Bill's unstable heart. He wrapped both arms around Frank's middle now, hard, and held on like grim death, gulping so he wouldn't cry. He wondered if what he had with Frank was better, or worse, or just different, than what those two lightning-quick sociopaths had with each other, and then he decided it didn't matter. Because this was good enough. Frank began gently untying the bloody kerchief from around Bill's neck, and that was good enough.

* * *

**Author's Note:  
**Well, that was kind of fucked up. The ending of the game (the Firefly sequence in Salt Lake City) really did affect me, emotionally. I think there's a genuine question as to just what Joel and Tess have done, how evil their actions have been, how much they care, and how much that is part of who they are.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the end of Bill's in-game chapter. I was convinced that it was going to end with Bill discovering Ellie was infected, and Joel having to kill him. Nope! Just the corpse of Bill's dead gay lover. It's both sad and hilarious that Bill has one of the _happier_ endings we see from NPCs, in that he's not dead or infected.

I know the violence got a little weird and sexual. But I think it matches up with Joel shooting that guy in the crotch at the very end of the game. In a world full of desperate people, I think things would be at least that desperate.


End file.
